Our North American friends have had AppLink in Ford vehicles for quite some time now, but Ford’s announcement today at Computex in Taipei was that Aussies (and the rest of Asia) will finally get AppLink. There isn’t any official release dates, but it is coming.
The first 3 apps that will be available on AppLink in the Asia market will be Pandora, TuneIn Radio and Kaluki are the first 3 AppLink apps to launch in Asia.
Version 2.0 of AppLink will give developers much more access to vehicle data. Let’s be clear here, developers will love this as it offers some amazing potential for a new breed of apps in your car. Another important improvement is support for push notifications. There’s potential for a Facebook or Twitter to support AppLink and have your updates read out to you for that real connected driving experience.
Ford also announced AppLink Catalog, this will be an smartphone app that lets you select from a range of free or paid apps that support AppLink. While there was no definite platform support mentioned for AppLink Catalog, Ford was showing iOS, Android and Windows Phone during the press conference.
Ford have announced that they are now part of the Genivi – (http://www.genivi.org). GENIVI is a non-profit industry alliance committed to driving the broad adoption of an In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) open-source development platform. The alliance aims to align requirements, deliver reference implementations, offer certification programs, and foster a vibrant open-source IVI community.
If you want to know more about Ford’s developer program, you should head to http://devloper.ford.com
More info soon.
